From a commercial viewpoint, it is important to be able to evaluate the performance of content provided online, e.g. advertisement (“ad”), game, music video, television show, etc. It is common to provide a system for computer users to manually rate content, e.g. by selecting a suitable rating value (e.g. a number of stars). It is also common to provide questionnaires or interviews as part of an ad effectiveness tracking scheme.
More recently, techniques for measuring a computer user's emotions, e.g. by facial features tracking or the like, have been incorporated into methods of evaluating the performance of video content. For example, an imaging unit, such as a webcam, can be used to capture the facial features of a computer user as they watch video content. The captured images can be processed to yield information about the computer user's emotions at certain points in the video, which is valuable feedback on the performance of the video.
The video and the captured images may be transmitted over the Internet, whereby the feedback may be automatically gathering from a plurality of remote computer users. For example, US 2012/0222057 discloses system in which a video is embedded in a web-enabled interface, which is arranged to collect mental state data for a computer user who watches the embedded video. The web enabled interface itself can be distributed, e.g. by sending an appropriate URL to a plurality of prospective viewers.
US 2011/0029666 discloses a passive user behaviour monitoring system in which a data collection agent is loaded to a video player and/or to a web page that displays a video clip.
US 2012/0072939 discloses a system and method for measuring audience reaction to video content by capturing images of each audience member via a webcam or the like.